I spotted a good-looking white guy with chestnut hair and almost delicate features, high cheekbones and a full sensual mouth. To me, he looked about thirty-five, but Helena said he was about ten years older, maybe a little more.
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “He’s got good genes. What’s his story?”
“Daniel Giradeau. The name’s French, but he’s actually American. A relative newcomer. He’s some big architect out of Chicago, over here on a long-term contract to design some building out in Canary Wharf. Moody sometimes, good in bed—”
“Helena?” I laughed.
“Who says I can’t play now and then?”
“All right, good for you.”
“Thank you for your blessing. The Japanese girl he’s talking to is Ayako Tamaguchi—oh, I can’t pronounce whatever it is. Born in San Francisco, so she and Daniel compare notes about homesickness for the US of A now and then. Very, very shrewd. Works for one of the Japanese banks down in EC4.”
I studied Ayako. Petite, shoulder-length hair and instead of the constant fixed smile and high voice that’s a stereotype with young girls from Tokyo, she was quiet, subdued.
“Hardly ever gets her kit off unless she’s winning a hand,” said Helena. “A bit of a mystery, her. Not one for chit-chat with the girls, although she seems to like Janet. That surprised me a little.”
“Why?”
“Well, uh…” Helena shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Because Japanese people aren’t known for their warmth towards the brothers and sisters?” I prompted. “It’s okay, Helena. We know. Nice to hear she’s not like that.”
She went on giving me the curriculum vitae of a few more guests, some unnecessary. It was surprising who had shown up. An art historian who had got his own miniseries on BBC1. A British gold medallist at the Olympics from a few years back. One Top of the Pops flavour of the month, the one other black girl here. I happened to think her CD was rubbish.
And Lionel Young. At my request, Helena kept him in the dark as to my real purpose here—along with the other escorts. Fitz knew I’d been hired, but he and I were old friends, and Helena said he didn’t care for the strip poker circuit anyway. No threat to my cover.
As for Lionel, I could see why older ladies liked having him on their arm. His long, dark brown face was more cute than handsome, and maybe that was why he shaved his head, to make him look more mature. He was tall, and his build strained at his tailored light pink shirt. Pinstripe trousers hinting at good legs and leaving no doubt about a tight, firm ass.
Now if we could only keep the sound off. Lionel talking ruined the picture. He had actually gravitated over to us and put his arms around my shoulder and Helena’s. Pretty transparent.
“Helena, you remembered my birthday!” he joked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“It means I’m going to unwrap you tonight like a present, babe.” Big neon smug grin. “It’s fate.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really,” he insisted, dropping his voice to a whisper. “You see yourself getting with one of these chinless crackers? Honest?”
Then just to wind him up, I pointed to the tall, gorgeous guy with chocolate skin and a movie idol face, hair cut short, talking to Gary Cahill and Vivian in a corner. Brooding eyes, but the mouth smiled easily—brilliant white teeth when his smile flashed. Neil. Had to be. I was pretending to have X-ray vision through his black turtleneck, remembering those powerful back muscles on the webcam when he took Janet Marshall.
“What about I get with him?” I suggested.
“Oh, oh,” said Helena, close enough to hear.
Lionel was scathing. “You’ll be…disappointed.”
“So I should count myself lucky that you happened to turn up, I guess.”
“I’m thanking God already that you’re here. You and me, babe. Magic.”
And he drifted away to join a circle of conversation, hand clapping George Westlake on the back.
“That guy works for you?” I asked, incredulous.
“Yes, but he doesn’t need to,” said Helena. “Believe it or not, he’s actually very smart at what he does. He’s an analyst for Buccaneer Cape Mining. Does quite well for himself. One of my first escorts, and I really needed him until you introduced me to a treasure like Fitz and I recruited Neil. Don’t pay attention to all that bluster. Sometimes players flirt and brag like that beforehand, helps shake things up before the games start. Speaking of which…”
Our host announced we should get down to it. Actually, what the guy said was that a “high stakes” poker game was about to start (and no mention that the stakes were what we had on). The party could continue, but at a neighbour’s house down the street, a large Victorian cottage, directions on photocopied handouts from the catering staff. Sure, it made you wonder why they needed to have the party there first at all, but Helena said it was to sniff out new blood, measure interest and attitudes, pique curiosity. Those curious but unacceptable would simply never pass the tests.
There was a buzz of excited conversation, and those who weren’t going to play got their coats.
Helena waved to one and all and said, “Have a good night, everybody!” There were air kisses and hugs, and as she fetched her coat, I moved quickly over to her at the door.
“Hey, where you going?” I said with a note of mild panic.
She was puzzled for a moment. “You’re in, darling. The rest is up to you.”
“But—”
“Teresa, considering what you may feel you have to do here, or maybe what you feel you want to do here, I’m not sure as your friend you’d like me to see you that way.”
She had a point.
As we played seven-card stud, I watched the personality dynamics. Lionel and Neil hardly said a word to each other, frostily civil at best. Vivian talked. A lot. But much of it wasn’t directed at me. She was polite but mostly indifferent to any comment I happened to make. George Westlake was amiable and charming, asking polite questions of the fresh faces, both men and women, and trying to draw them out of their shells. He came across as a kindly older brother feeling responsible for the newbies. Cahill was boisterous, full of opinions but harmless.
I thought for a while that there was a vibe going on between Giradeau and Ayako. He bid for her a couple of times and lost his pants in the bargain, but he took it in his stride. She gave nothing away. Not who she wanted, who she might have had before or how she felt about him, having tasted the goods.
I think there must have been a long-standing consensual arrangement to take it easy on the newbies for the first few games, because I was almost ignored. George Westlake bluffed me out with a pair of kings to get my top off, leaving me in my black bra, and that was as rough as it got for an hour. Then things got earnest. George had the most clothes on at the table, but that didn’t necessarily make him the best player. Few of the women bid on him. Vivian had cackled gleefully away and bluffed Neil down to his birthday suit (gorgeous chest, but I couldn’t get a peek yet at what was under the table). And Lionel was down to his Marks & Sparks boxers.
The play moved on to getting it on. With a vengeance, Vivian went after one of the newbies, a newspaper columnist for one of the Sunday papers, and within a couple of hands, the man was on his knees and between her legs under the table. I watched Vivian bite her bottom lip with pleasure, not so into it that she didn’t give the rest of us a wink, and then our bawdy redheaded lady grabbed a fistful of the guy’s hair and began to moan. Loudly.
After she came, she looked back at all of us and said, “Ah, that was nice.” While the journo slunk away to the washroom, inexplicably shamed. Bizarre.
Giradeau took a break to go mix fresh drinks for everybody. Cahill got pulled away by a phone call. New game. Lionel’s deal, and he grinned at me as he said, “Well, we got so much new blood tonight, we ought to be merciful. Let’s go Old School.”
“Please don’t on my account,” I said tartly.
“Well, Teresa, if you can read the numbers on your cards then I think you’re ready to learn 69,” quipped Lionel.
“Let’s see what you got,” I said coolly.
Lionel grinned and laid down four queens and an ace. Four of a kind that just cleaned out my full house.
Damn it.
The others. Westlake, Vivian. And Cahill returning from his phone call, quickly picking up the thread. Applauding, making quips like horny teenagers.
“Lucky, lucky Lionel!”
“Sorry, Teresa, you’re going down—literally!”
“Well played, though, darling!”
Neil offered only a tight smile. Giradeau chuckled but made no comment.
Well, I told myself nervously, this is new. Having 69 with a guy in front of an audience.
“After you,” said Lionel with a smirk and waved to the leather settee near the large picture window.
I’d be damned if I’d look embarrassed.
As I pushed back my chair, I rose from the table dramatically, lifting one eyebrow. My tits looked like they were about to spill out of my bra cups, my nipples exposed, and I had no panties on. I knew instinctively that this was somehow more erotic for the men than if I had been fully nude. I turned on my dainty heel and did a fashion model’s runway walk to the settee, doing a panther climb onto it, my hands making the leather crunch and sink under my palms. When I glanced back at Lionel, the head of his cock was a ripe cherry ready to burst at the hem of his boxer shorts.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said as he sauntered over to me. “I want to lie down.”
“Chivalrous bastard, aren’t you?” I muttered.
Titters and laughs from the card table as I got up, let him collapse down on the sofa and then straddled him, facing away. At least his skin was warm. The tension between Lionel and me seemed to enhance the delight of the players seeing us go down on each other. I suspected he might be showing off and goading me for their sake, but I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter.
My consolation was that I didn’t have to look in his smug face but only down at his cock, more impressively thick than long, the veins in it almost angry with the flush of blood but the whole package still appealing enough for my mouth, and I slid my fingers through the black curls of his pubic hair and prompted an involuntary twitch. My tongue gave him a lick of the ice cream cone just before my lips came down, and I was distracted for a moment by the somewhat aggressive parting of my pussy lips and the stroke of a soft, insistent tongue. I didn’t care for his technique, but I felt my juices flow in response to the simple stimulation. There was a burst of applause from the card table.
I bobbed my head faster, sucking him in and out, darting my tongue around the tender skin just below the head. Giving him a nice steady rhythm. In contrast, he couldn’t seem to decide on what he wanted to do, his tongue lapping me a few strokes then his mouth covering me and then back to anxious tongue strokes. I found myself summoning an image of Fitz, invoking a fantasy to help me get me off, and I was barely halfway up the curve before I felt the hard organ in my mouth stiffen even more and then a rush of warm cum flood into my mouth. I did my best to wait until the salty stream halted, and then I quickly took my lips away and snatched for a tissue from the box on the coffee table.
And this man with his head between my legs stopped and lay back. Creep.
I glared at him over my shoulder, and he was as relaxed and self-satisfied as any pampered house cat. It was only when there were whispers from a couple of the other women at the table that he finally woke up. “Oh,” he said in a small voice.
“Don’t bother,” I snapped, and I slid off him and padded back to the table to fetch my glass of wine and get the taste of him out of my mouth. I snatched up my handbag, excused myself from the game about to be dealt and made for the upstairs bathroom. Fortunately, I had brought along a traveller’s kit of toothpaste and toothbrush—
Creep, I kept thinking as I finished rinsing my mouth. Then perhaps as a defence mechanism over that ugly little episode, my brain switched over to professional gear, thinking about the case. It was starting to seem that my original contention was correct. The blackmail and intimidating notes weren’t about Helena’s clients, just one, and if this was how Lionel behaved with women, he was sure to collect grudges.
Creep, I thought again, and I sat down on the toilet, feeling incredibly frustrated. Lionel had done nothing for me, but I had astonished myself by feeling so turned on by being watched. Now I was all worked up, and I needed to get off. I began to play with my pussy, my breath coming out in anxious huffs, my middle finger dancing on the head of my clitoris, and it was at that exact moment that—
I realised I had left the bathroom door open.
Neil was in the doorway, nude, carrying a giant martini glass and staring down at me. His expression conveyed apology and yet admiration, too. There I sat on the toilet with my legs splayed, fingers touching myself, and as he examined me there, I never saw a cock get hard so fast. He appeared oblivious to his own erection.
“They think I’m mixing drinks,” he said by way of explanation. “I thought somebody should check up on you. You looked…”
“Pissed off?” I suggested.
He shrugged and smiled. “I was going to say upset.”
“Lionel’s a pig,” I declared.
He nodded. “Yes, he is.”
I let my eyes linger on his washboard stomach and the graceful planes of skin leading down to a tangle of dark pubic hair and that bar of hard flesh. He had at least three inches on Lionel, but what I really preferred was that he seemed to be a gentleman. Not too much of one, otherwise he would have ducked out. I wanted him to stay. I moved my hand to caress the inside of a thigh, letting him see all of my pussy as I said, “I need to come. Want to help?”
“We could go back to the game and see what happens.”
“Or I could get relief right here, right now.”
With an athlete’s grace, he sank to his knees in front of me, resting the martini glass casually on the basin. “You seem to be fine with what you’re doing. I’ll play up here.”
His hands disappeared behind my back and unclasped my bra, casting it aside to drape over the bathtub sill. Then those large palms cupped my tits like ripe fruit, and with barely a conscious thought, my finger on my clit increased its rhythm. I felt my nipples squeezed between his fingers, gentle firm pressure of cupping me, and I began to nervously lean ever so slightly forward and back. We didn’t kiss, but our mouths were so close together I could taste his breath.
He fondled my tits, a snake tongue darting out to tease a nipple, and then his lips sucked one in. I gasped. My left hand caressed the tight curls on his head, and I lifted his chin so that I could kiss him at last. I closed my eyes as our lips met, our mouths opening simultaneously to learn each other through our tongues, and all the while those massive, brown hands danced along the curves under my breasts, traced their way in circles over the areolae, tantalised and pinched me. We broke away for a moment, and I let him see how drenched I was.
“Get inside me,” I ordered him in a husky whisper.
He shook his head. “No, you’re almost there. You’re turning me on so much like this, baby, just play with yourself—”
“But I need—I need—”
He squeezed my tits harder as he nuzzled the back of my ear and kissed me there, and that was all I needed. I keened helplessly and rocked in spasms, suddenly clutching him with my left arm. The heat, the cascading waves of pleasure…Like an act of mercy, he brought his right hand down to move my o
wn aside and cover my nether lips. But he didn’t penetrate me. I thrust myself against the heel of his hand, still coming, beads of perspiration running down my forehead as my fingers shot out to grip his cock. All at once, I felt warm, wet bullets of spunk rain against my belly, and as I came out of myself just enough to look down, there flew another long stream of semen that hit my thigh. I jerked him a little to prompt another mild lava flow just over the head of his penis, and he bit his bottom lip and shut his eyes. I swear it was the sexiest way I had ever seen a man come. Not a wide-eyed gasp, or tortured, openmouthed grunt. Neil looked like he was lifted by a beautiful piece of music.
Then we both came back to earth and laughed together at nothing.
I looked down at myself and thought we better quickly shower. We’d both been missing from the game too long, and while it was understood people would have preferences and targets, it was part of the peculiar manners of the circuit that you didn’t just abandon the group festivities for one-on-ones until the end.
He ran the shower and gestured for me to get in. We shared it for a minute in silence, washing ourselves clean, Neil saying pass the soap, and then I felt him lightly massaging my back in swirls of foam. Unnecessary, yet lovely. I turned around, and he soaped my breasts and my belly, taking me in his arms and kissing me like a proper lover. It was gentle and sweet and with a low-amp passion that felt so natural, even inevitable. For what felt like ages, we stood there, my hands tracing the formation of each one of his back muscles, his fingers on the cheeks of my ass, tongues saying all we needed to say in the private shared chamber of our kiss.
“You could have fucked me,” I told him, smiling.
“I want to win you,” he replied.
“The game is everything, huh?”
“Hey, I like to think I’m not as shallow as that,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “But…You know people are in such a damn rush. Internet dating, pick-ups in bars. I don’t want to come off sounding like a Neanderthal or something, but I’ve thought long and hard about what I like, and I like the chase. These games, they don’t have to be about getting yourself a sure lay or as much as you can. Maybe some others are here for that, but it ain’t me. The most provocative, interesting, charismatic women I’ve ever met, I’ve met at these games.”
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